Extended downtime next Tuesday, December 13th

[mark]

Our hosting provider, ServerBeach, will be performing some maintenance on our servers next week. They're going to be unplugging and carrying them across the data center and reinstalling them in a new location. They're doing some reorganization and our rack is one of the ones affected.

The main impact from this is that Dreamwidth will be hard down (no response at all and no maintenance page) from 9AM to 11AM PST (1700 to 1900 UTC) on Tuesday, December 13th. There is a secondary impact in that when we come back up, none of our caches will be warm. The site will be slow for some period of time after it comes back -- up to several hours.

I will post again when we get closer to the outage. As always, we will update our @dreamwidth Twitter account as this happens.

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Thanks much! (Weird to think of an entire site being picked up and carried across a data center on its server boxes, but there you go.)

[mark]

Weird and scary. Having done a few moves like that myself, and not being able to be physically involved here, it's like sending my child off to someone's house and just sitting by the phone. He'll probably be OK, but...

[rydra_wong]

OMG DUN DROP DREAMWIDTH!!! *panics*

[senmut]

You guys are awesome, I hope you know. Thanks for the heads up; I'll sleep all day then. LOL.

[jumpuphigh]

Eeeek! What am I going to do for those hours? :D

[azurelunatic]

Load up ereader with good books?

[ursamajor]

Play Glitch. ;)

(I need to get some screencaps to make Glitch icons ... then I need to figure out if I have an icon-making program on this computer. It's been forever since I've been inspired!)

[elfin]

Hope the move goes smoothly! That's always scary.

[jb_slasher]

Thank you so much for the info! :)

[onyxlynx]

Thanks; I've added this to my calendar to prevent panic.

[manifold]

Same here!

[musyc]

Thanks for the head's-up! I will attempt to stave off the withdrawal. XD

[redsixwing]

Thanks for the warning, and good luck with the server move.

[kickair8p]

We should own the goddamn servers! Then this wouldn't happen! ::giggle!:: Sorry, couldn't resist the AO3 ref. So, uhmmm, good luck?

~

[mark]

I'd love to, honestly. That has never really been feasible though because we never have enough money in the bank to really afford dropping $50k on some servers. It would make long term sense because we could host all of the servers for a lot less than we pay per month now, but the break even point would be ~1 year down the road.

I've thought about doing a fund drive to make this happen. Never made it happen though. There are some advantages to having the servers be at a managed facility...

Check the Time?

[bubbleblower]

9AM to 11AM PST (1600 to 1800 UTC)

Are you sure that's right? PST is UTC-8 in the winter, UTC-7 in the summer, isn't it?

Re: Check the Time?

[mark]

Damn, thanks. You're right. Updated the post.

[pinesandmaples]

Thanks for letting us know. I'm sure everything will be great.

[badly_knitted]

Thanks for the advance warning! Hope it all goes smoothly.

[dancing_serpent]

Thanks for the warning! I really appreciate knowing in advance.

[frith]

Thanks for the head's up. 8^) Maybe I'll finally write some Christmas cards on Tuesday.

[daedala]

So the entire site will be using the sneakernet protocol for a couple of hours.

Ok, I'm easily amused.

[montuos]

I cackled out loud at that! ;D

[trialia]

OMG that is the most PERFECT TIMING EVER.

That's exactly when my Xmas carol concert is, and the precise length of time I would be unable to check DW anyway. Normally these things are timed at the worst possible moment for me... but not this one! Bwah :D

[havocthecat]

And here I said to myself, "Ack, I'll be unable to post to LJ too because DW will be down!" I actually forgot that I could post to LJ without having to use the crossposter. I like this site way too much.

[sylvaine]

Thanks for the heads up! Maybe I'll use that time to actually pack before the absolute last minute, for once.... *g*

[wytchcroft]

well hell, guess i'll have to find some diversion in the real world for a change!

or maybe just a nap... :)

good luck mit der movering!

[sunt]

I made a BIG note to self so I won't forget and panic--thnks for the heads up! Hoping it all goes smoothly.

I might actually get some crafting done in the downtime. ;- )
Hazle

(also, I wish I understood the humor in some of the comments)

[denise]

FYI, last night's maintenance was not what Mark's posting about here! This will still be happening on the (US-time) morning of Tuesday 13 Dec.

[neotoma]

Of course the scheduled hard down is on the day I was supposed to post a fest fic.

Thankfully the mods were very understanding -- especially after I also came up with the Surprise Jury Duty for the draft due date.

Here's to hoping things get back up in a reasonable time frame.